Eureka math- anyone else having trouble with this new curriculum?

[Anonymous]

Especially for 5th grade, tape diagrams are very useful! Later when you do lots of fraction work, having a tape diagram helps separate the hard numbers and turn it I to basically a first grade addition problem. As a teacher I see how tape diagrams evolve from K to middle school. It’s amazing. Same thing with number lines. It’s super hard jumping right in without it building over the years but it’s worth it! Look up embarcó for support and Duane Habacker on YuoTube. He has videos for all the lessons I believe. There’s a district in California (Oakland maybe?) that has homework helper videos for every lesson. And Zearn also follows Eureka exactly, though it’s more screen time and many parents complain about it. You can set up a free account.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were in the same boat in the spring -daughter in compacted math and doing very well. When the switch occurred and the curriculum was abruptly switched to Eureka, my DD stopped being able to understand--likely due to the curriculum switch, the subject (fractions) and the lack of "real instruction". Our daughter didn't do well with the videos they had to watch and for whatever reason wasn't learning from the teacher. When this school year started-5th grade-and fractions became an issue again, we quickly hired a tutor. Unfortunately, the tutor isn't familiar with the eureka math curriculum but is at least able to expalain the problems in a way DD can understand. My DD has stopped crying about math and from what I can tell has regained her confidence in being able to do the work. I'd ask the school about the recordings--see if they can do what they're supposed to be doing.

There zero need to understand Eureka math. Your daughter understands real math - that’s what counts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I let my kid skip all the stupid strategies and just do standard algorithm.
I try to make sure he knows word form to standard form translation.
Of course we learn key facts.
The plus of online learning is that we can skip stuff. Which we do

Don’t they have to show their work? DS only gets partial credit for the right answer, they are expected to show their steps and draw tape diagrams.

Not now, no. They need to do the exit ticket which is a Google form where you just type in the answers.
Even before they were supposed to, but if you could write the equation/operation you performed to get the answer you were fine afaik.
Who cares about “credit” in 5th grade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a compacted math teacher and I really like Eureka math and I love having the workbooks. It is much better than Curriculum 2.0, though it is definitely more challenging. All of my students who were successful last year are having equal success his year. However, I do have a few students that probably should have never been in the advanced class and are struggling. However, it is not with the new curriculum, just with math in general.

Might you be able to find a tutor with Eureka experience? Or could the tutor use the Succeed book so that he/she is using the same strategies? If the tutor is using the wrong strategies, that will hurt your son in trying to learn the with this curriculum. Also, I agree with PP's that you should look for Youtube videos. There are so many out there that will both show the lesson for the day, worth through the problem set, and go through any homework problems.

I would also encourage your DS to use the student support time to get extra help. That time is there for your child to ask for help.

I hope things get easier.

There are no right or wrong strategies; if a child is able to do a math problem and show their work in a reasonable way (which is usually something like X+Y=Z) they are fine.
Nobody needs stupid tape diagrams or area models, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a mistake they made in the implementation of DL was not giving the Compacted 5/6 math students the "indoctrination" into Eureka math technique. You have to do it their way. Also, I think it is a mistake that they're grading students on aspects of this specific Eureka curriculum - like whether they can do a tape diagram. If they can solve the fraction problem, it should not matter whether they can do a tape diagram.

Finally the voice of reason! Your last sentence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a mistake they made in the implementation of DL was not giving the Compacted 5/6 math students the "indoctrination" into Eureka math technique. You have to do it their way. Also, I think it is a mistake that they're grading students on aspects of this specific Eureka curriculum - like whether they can do a tape diagram. If they can solve the fraction problem, it should not matter whether they can do a tape diagram.

Finally the voice of reason! Your last sentence.

Except that pedagogically, you make the kid show steps and do it the boring way on the easy stuff because they’ll need to know the process for the hard stuff. In Algebra terms, I’ve had kids fight me on showing their work on one or two step equations because they did it in their head... but when we moved into multi-step equations, they were stuck.

Tape diagrams force kids to understand proportionality and orders of magnitude, and help also make that visual link between fractions and decimals... which is critically important in later years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a mistake they made in the implementation of DL was not giving the Compacted 5/6 math students the "indoctrination" into Eureka math technique. You have to do it their way. Also, I think it is a mistake that they're grading students on aspects of this specific Eureka curriculum - like whether they can do a tape diagram. If they can solve the fraction problem, it should not matter whether they can do a tape diagram.

Finally the voice of reason! Your last sentence.

Except that pedagogically, you make the kid show steps and do it the boring way on the easy stuff because they’ll need to know the process for the hard stuff. In Algebra terms, I’ve had kids fight me on showing their work on one or two step equations because they did it in their head... but when we moved into multi-step equations, they were stuck.

Tape diagrams force kids to understand proportionality and orders of magnitude, and help also make that visual link between fractions and decimals... which is critically important in later years.

I agree on importance on showing one’s work, but one can do it equation style. No need to draw pictures unless a kid really doesn’t understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like That Eureka starts simple in each module and very methodically builds up. DD just finished the first module, and the word problems she had to do toward the end were pretty complex, requiring her to figure out multiple steps to figuring out the math. It is definitely more challenging than 2.0, which didn’t seem to have much methodology behind it.

It does seem superior to the previous system, but as others pointed out, but requiring kids to apply methods that no grown up would use may be overkill. It may help some kids and that's fine. For example, my child uses the models for multiplying fractions because it makes the teacher happy. They'd prefer to simply do the multiplication especially because these are a pain to show using Kami. They don't struggle with math at all and so far have perfect scores on their assessments; however, I think some flexibility would be an improvement. It would certainly make math class more enjoyable.